


Entelechy

by Zoe Rayne (MontanaHarper)



Series: The Full VR Experience [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-11
Updated: 2005-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:25:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontanaHarper/pseuds/Zoe%20Rayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"What do you want the answer to be? Are you more afraid that this is real or that it's not?"</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entelechy

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to Casspeach for her interactive beta and for being demanding over and above the call of duty, and to Libitina for pointing me in the right direction.

It was more awkward than it should have been, working with Major Sheppard after the—probably wholly imaginary—encounter in Rodney's VR simulation. After all, if Sheppard had really been there, then he'd obviously wanted what had happened and so there should have been no awkwardness, and if it had all been in Rodney's head, then it _hadn't_ happened and so there was nothing to feel awkward about.

That didn't change the fact that Rodney kept catching himself staring at Sheppard's mouth and hands, then needing to turn away to hide the resulting blush and, on the bad days, the even more incriminating bulge in his khakis.

It was depressingly like being a teenager again, unable to control his wayward libido. He chalked it up to the unsettling nature of that kind of sexual epiphany at his age, and tried to move on. He'd even been reasonably successful, at least outwardly.

He'd also sworn to stay away from the VR simulator; in the past it had been his version of R&R, but the whole idea was neither restful nor relaxing at this point. Instead, memories invaded his dreams, leaving him hard and aching in the mornings and simultaneously anticipating and dreading going to bed at night. He had no intention of making the situation worse by going back.

Except that there he was, standing in the doorway of the large room, and he knew that despite his best intentions, he was going to sit down, put the silver headband on, and sink back into the simulation of his apartment on Earth. He thought that he was hoping Sheppard wouldn't return, but he wasn't absolutely sure.

His apartment was exactly as he'd left it last time, right down to the _Star Trek_ episode paused on his TiVo and Cat rubbing up against his ankles in a not-so-subtle bid for affection, or possibly for food. Rodney himself was wearing boxers and his favorite tee-shirt.

Everything _seemed_ perfectly normal.

He started to relax, more certain than ever that it had been some bizarre glitch in the VR program triggered by his latent bisexuality. A quick trip to the kitchen yielded a beer and a bag of his favorite chips—both of which ended up decorating the hardwood floor when Sheppard's quiet "hey" startled him and he spun around.

"Sorry," Sheppard said, and he really did look contrite. He'd been lounging in the kitchen doorway, but now he straightened up and moved toward Rodney. "When you didn't come back after last time, I thought...." The words trailed off and Rodney wasn't sure what Sheppard thought.

He shook his head; he wasn't sure what he thought, either. Before he could say anything, though, Sheppard was kissing him. "I missed you," Sheppard whispered against his lips, and Rodney fisted handfuls of Sheppard's thin cotton tee-shirt, torn between conflicting urges, needing to pull him closer and to push him away.

It was Sheppard's hands, warm and solid, sliding down his back to palm his ass that finally gave Rodney the strength to back up, to hold Sheppard at arm's length.

"I can't do this," he said, and he meant it, really he did. He wanted Sheppard so much it hurt, but he really needed to know—even more strongly than he'd been afraid of knowing after the last time—if this was all just a fantasy, something dreamed up by his overactive libido.

"You can," Sheppard countered, tracing callused fingertips down Rodney's cheekbone and across his bottom lip.

The kitchen shimmered away and his bedroom came into focus. He shouldn't have been surprised that his own subconscious would betray him. The pillow was still in the middle of the bed, and he felt his face flush at the memories it evoked: the bulk of it lifting his hips up, the fabric dragging roughly against his cock as he arched and thrust, Sheppard taking him apart with tongue and fingers.

"You want to," Sheppard said softly. "That's why you came back."

There was nothing Rodney could say to that; Sheppard was probably right. Still, he reached for the silver headband. When, just as he'd expected, Sheppard's hand stopped him, he said, "John, I have to know."

Sheppard took his hand and kissed the palm, his lips and teeth tracing a path up Rodney's wrist and forearm and leaving a chill tingle in their wake. Finally, he stopped and looked Rodney in the eye. "What do you want the answer to be? Are you more afraid that this is real or that it's not?"

And that was the question, wasn't it? There were so many potential repercussions, regardless of the truth, and part of Rodney thought maybe it was just the _not knowing_ that was the real problem. Not knowing if he was going crazy, or desperately repressing his sexuality, or maybe just being stalked by a crazy, desperately repressed Air Force major.

Somehow that last possibility wasn't as unnerving as it probably should have been.

"I have to _know_ ," he repeated. "If you're just a figment of my imagination...well, I'd like to say that I'd stop, because that makes this kind of creepy and stalkerish of me, but I'm self-aware enough to know that I probably wouldn't." Sheppard half-smiled at the admission. "But if it's really you, John...." He let the sentence trail off, leaning into Sheppard's touch.

"If it's really me, then what?" Sheppard prompted, watching Rodney intently.

Rodney thought about it. If it really was Sheppard, then he wanted whatever they were doing to be real, wanted the touches to be sweaty and sticky and leave some kind of mark on them both—on the outside, instead of just in their heads.

"Then I don't want to do _this_ ," Rodney answered simply, nodding at the simulation that surrounded them. It wasn't until he took in Sheppard's stricken look that he realized how the statement could be misinterpreted. In the second before Sheppard—John—shimmered and vanished, though, Rodney had his answer. He _knew_.

He fumbled his own headband off, but it was too late. John had already gone.

~ * ~ * ~

The actual area of the city, as represented by the phrase "the size of Manhattan," hadn't really sunk in with Rodney until he needed to find one specific person in that area. A person who didn't want to be found, and who'd been _trained_ in evasion.

John wasn't answering his radio, of course. No, that would be too easy. And while Rodney could certainly press-gang some marines into helping him search, he could hardly explain why he needed Major Sheppard so urgently, so he gave up on the idea and simply struck out on his own, directed by a combination of efficiency and logic.

It was efficiency that sent him to the control room to scan the city's sensors for solo life signs. The results were spectacularly unhelpful; it seemed like half of the city was following in the footsteps of Garbo.

Logic took him to the main workout room, where he found Teyla and Ford doing something that was supposed to be unarmed combat training, but looked more like foreplay from where Rodney was standing. Of course, it was possible he was just projecting.

The visit to the mess hall was a result of his inherent pragmatism. He found dozens of assorted scientists and military personnel, not to mention some really good faux blueberry muffins, but no John.

He stood outside the door to John's quarters, driven there by a combination of frustration and the nagging sense that he'd be an idiot not to check in the most obvious place. Of course, he also felt like an idiot for thinking that John would hide in his own quarters.

The doors slid open before he even knocked.

Rodney stepped through quickly, before John could change his mind and lock him out. It wasn't like he couldn't hack his way through any lock in Atlantis, but it would take time and would probably require explanations that he didn't particularly want to give.

The lights were dim, but they were bright enough for him to see John lying on his back in bed, fully dressed and with one arm flung across his eyes. "You need something, McKay?"

And that stopped Rodney for a second, because what if he was wrong? What if it hadn't really been John in the VR simulation? He could play it cool, say something noncommittal, and try to get him to admit to...whatever this thing was that was between them. Of course, people skills weren't really Rodney's forte; he'd given up on subtlety years ago and instead relied on simply bludgeoning people with words until they gave up and did what he wanted.

Honestly, he didn't see a reason to change what worked.

"I need you to fuck me," he said, pitching his voice low and trying to let the desire bleed through and wipe away any doubts John might have had.

John was absolutely still, possibly not even breathing, and for an instant Rodney thought he'd been horribly, horribly wrong or, worse, that he'd been right but that John was still going to play it off as some kind of joke.

He couldn't let that happen. Not if John really wanted him, because it had been too good, and if they were going to die in the Pegasus Galaxy—and Rodney was pretty sure that was the way it was going to go, no matter how brave and heroic they all tried to be—then he deserved as much incredible sex as he could get while he was around to enjoy it. And if that incredible sex was with the best friend he'd ever had...well, so much the better.

He moved over to the bed and sat down on the edge, bending over to unlace his boots. "You're going to have to show me what to do," he said matter-of-factly. "I've got a theoretical understanding, of course, but no practical experience." He kicked his boots off and tugged his shirt over his head, then stood to unfasten his khakis. "At least not bottoming," he added, and that apparently got John's attention, because John propped himself up on his elbows and stared.

"But you've got experience topping?" he asked slowly, with something that was offensively close to disbelief.

"With women, yes," Rodney said, ignoring the tone. He pulled the bottle of lube from his pocket and tossed it onto the bed at John's side before pushing his pants and boxers down in one smooth motion, ridiculously pleased that his hands were steady. "The mechanics are pretty much the same, right? Anal sex is anal sex, regardless of whether your partner is male or female. I think I've got a reasonable idea of what to expect, based on empirical data."

John was shaking his head. "First of all, clinical discussion of sex? So not the way to get me in the mood. Second, you don't look all that interested to me," he said, looking pointedly at Rodney's flaccid penis.

And while Rodney could've hoped for a better reaction, he had certainly imagined far worse ones. At least there was no longer any room for pretense between them; John had tacitly admitted that their encounter hadn't been a figment of Rodney's imagination, and that did a great deal to quell the butterflies that had taken up residence in Rodney's stomach.

"I hunted you down," he said, "asked you—very sincerely, I thought—to fuck me, and even took off my clothes. In what alternate reality does that qualify as 'not interested'?" John opened his mouth, presumably to point out Rodney's nerves-related equipment failure again, which, thank you, but he really didn't need noted further. "You know what? Never mind. Shut up," he said, moving onto the bed and kissing John to make sure his instruction was followed.

He felt the body under him tense, and then slowly start to relax as he focused on exploring John's mouth with his own. Sliding one hand under the hem of John's shirt, he rucked it up, then pulled away from the kiss enough to say, "A little parity would be nice."

John grinned against his lips. "We have the same parity."

"Oh, ha ha. Yes, yes, we're both odd. Thank you. Enough with the sophomoric math humor; will you please get naked now?" He tugged at John's shirt, stopping only when fingers closed firmly around his wrist.

"Seriously, Rodney, wait. The last thing you said to me in the simulation was, and I quote, 'Then I don't want to do this.' How did we get from there to you naked in my bed?"

Rodney shook his head. "The more important question is why were we in the simulation in the first place? Why did you approach me in virtual reality rather than in, well, _reality_?"

John was silent for so long that Rodney thought maybe he wasn't going to answer. When John finally did say something, it seemed almost like a non sequitur. "Women are easy."

It was in no way, shape, or form the answer Rodney was expecting. He snorted. "Oh, I'll just bet they are, Casanova."

"Not like that," John said quietly, not rising to the bait. "I can flirt with women, and if I get shot down, it's no harm no foul. Guys, not so much. I mean, they'd probably be just as easy as women if I weren't in the military, but as it is...."

"Yes. Yes, I suppose I see the problem." It didn't matter that Rodney really couldn't relate to a worldview where getting rejected by women was somehow easy. He still had enough imagination to see the exponential difference between the rejection of 'acceptable' sexual advances and 'unacceptable' ones. Particularly in an environment as deeply invested in heteronormativity as the U.S. military.

"I've spent so long not taking that particular risk that I think I kind of forgot how to. I thought I'd stopped even wanting to. And then along came Rodney McKay and turned my world upside-down." Now John was half-smiling at the ceiling and Rodney couldn't help smiling as well.

"Yes, well, I do tend to have that effect on people," he said. "Samantha Carter, back at the SGC? Couldn't keep her hands off m—" John shut him up with a kiss. After long moments of leisurely exploration with mouth and hands, Rodney realized that his equipment failure issue was a thing of the past. He thrust gently against Sheppard's leg, the material of Sheppard's BDUs worn soft and smooth.

John broke the kiss. "Your turn," he said, and Rodney didn't even pretend not to understand.

He sat up and straddled John's thighs. "I take it back," he said. "Maybe I don't want to have sex with someone as obtuse as you. 'I don't want to do _this_.' Note the emphasis. Translation: I don't want a clean, virtual, fantasy experience; I want hot, sweaty, sticky _real_ sex that involves your dick and my ass and very likely some obscenely large number of my neurons over-stimulated and dying as a result of an amazing orgasm."

Somewhere midway through Rodney's statement, John's eyes closed and he let out a small sound that could have been a moan, and then reached out to wrap his fingers around Rodney's dick. Apparently talking dirty worked for John in a big way; Rodney grinned and mentally filed that information for future reference as he started to work on the buttons of John's BDUs, only slightly hampered by the almost irresistible desire to just stretch himself out on top of John and rut against him until they both came.

He finally managed to get John's dick free, and John's pants and boxers shoved part way down his thighs, only to have fingers wrap around his wrists again and stop him from going any further. "You talk a good game, Rodney, really you do," John said, "but this is a pretty big step."

And if Rodney hadn't thoroughly committed himself to this course of action already, he probably would've just dressed and left. As it was, he'd not only decided to go through with it, but he found he wanted it enough to put up with John's seemingly endless uncertainties. Nothing said he had to be patient, though.

"If you expect me to be reluctant and blushingly virginal, you're in for a shock," he said. "Maybe it's escaped your attention, but this isn't exactly prom night and I'm about as far from a sixteen-year-old girl as you can get." John started to open his mouth, but Rodney covered it with a hand before he could say anything. "I don't tend to say things I don't mean, so when I say that I want you to fuck me, I mean exactly that."

"God, Rodney, I want to, really I do," and there was a tremor in John's voice that told Rodney more than the words did, "but this isn't the Construct. Like I said, this is a big step. I don't want to hurt you."

And Rodney really hadn't wanted to do this, because frankly, it was embarrassing, but he was hard now, and more than a little impatient, so he leaned forward, pinning John's wrists to the bed, and said, "Do you know what I did after our first encounter in the simulation?" John's eyes had widened as Rodney spoke, and he shook his head silently. "I couldn't stop thinking about it. Partly I think it was the mind-blowing orgasm, because, God, John—" He stopped himself, then started again, "But mostly I couldn't stop thinking about the last thing you said. Do you remember what it was?" John nodded slightly. "Say it, John. Say it again for me."

"I want to fuck you," John whispered, and shuddered under him.

Rodney's dick twitched at the words, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. John was completely still now, but Rodney could feel the tension thrumming through him, and he knew that it wouldn't take much more to make him lose that tenuous control. When he opened his eyes again, John was looking up at him.

"God. Yes, please," Rodney said, finding the bottle of lube by touch alone, never breaking eye contact.

John licked his lips. "So what did you do?" At Rodney's frown, he clarified, "You said you couldn't stop thinking about it. Did you just think, just fantasize, or...?"

Another deep breath, because Rodney really wasn't particularly good at the whole 'talking dirty in bed' thing, but it seemed to turn John on and a turned-on John Sheppard was well worth the effort, in Rodney's admittedly limited experience. He popped the cap on the bottle, and squeezed some of the clear liquid out onto his fingertips, making sure it was well within John's line of sight.

"I kept remembering how good it felt to have your mouth on me and your fingers in me," Rodney said, reaching back between his legs to slide one lube-slicked finger into himself, just as he'd done in the privacy of his quarters. It was somehow both more embarrassing and sexier this time.

"And I thought about how much better it would feel to have you inside me. So I used my fingers—"

He pushed a second finger in beside the first, flushing slightly at the way the sensations made his breath hitch. John moaned, his lips parted and his eyes focused on the spot where Rodney's wrist disappeared between his legs.

"—and imagined that it was your dick—"

More lube, and three fingers now, and the feeling of being stretched and filled just made him want even more. He drizzled lube onto John's dick and stroked the slick, warm length of it slowly with his free hand, still fucking himself on his own fingers at the same time. John's hands had moved to Rodney's thighs and now his fingers clenched, but Rodney barely felt it. Rodney shifted forward, sliding his fingers out and using them to aim John's dick.

"—your dick sliding into me—"

Slowly, oh so slowly, he started to lower himself down, the blunt thickness of John's dick first pressing against him and then pressing _into_ him, stretching him even further than his fingers had. The sting and burn made him gasp, and John's eyes snapped up to his face, but the pain was gone again as quickly as it had come, and he was sliding the rest of the way down John's shaft.

"—you, fucking me. Oh, God, John."

And then John had one hand wrapped around Rodney's dick, hot and urgent and stroking him ruthlessly, and the other sliding over Rodney's stomach and up to his chest, rubbing at one sensitive nipple. Rodney let himself sink into it, overwhelmed by the sensations, feeling like he was being both surrounded and filled by John. Why the hell had he resisted this? Why hadn't he just come to John's room at the first opportunity and told him in no uncertain terms that they were going to start having regular sex now, please and thank you. For a genius, sometimes he was an idiot.

Under him, he felt John's hips shift—a gentle hint—and he looked down to see John watching him intently. Slowly at first, he started to move, trying to get a sense of how far he could go, and how fast, and it all felt so amazing, his nerves seeming to spark from the friction of John's dick sliding out of him and then back in again.

Breathily, John said, "Fuck. Sorry, this is gonna be—" and then the rhythm of his hand on Rodney's dick was suddenly erratic, and his other hand was clutching at Rodney's hip and Rodney realized that John was coming.

John was coming because of him, coming _in_ him.

And that was all it took to make Rodney come, too, and it was like no orgasm he'd ever had before. The feeling of being filled, his body clenching around John's dick as he came, made everything exponentially more intense. Eyes closed, he rode it out, and he was still twitching with the aftershocks when he heard a soft huff of laughter.

He opened his eyes, ready to go on the defensive because in his experience laughter during or just after sex was almost never a good thing, but the source of John's amusement was immediately evident.

"Um," Rodney said, and he could feel his face burning, "I'm...that's a little out of my normal range. Sorry."

But John just grinned and mopped a white droplet off his cheek with his finger and then licked it clean. "Next time," he said, "I want to suck you until you come."

Rodney shivered at the thought.

Carefully, he shifted up and off of John—the feeling as John's dick slid out of him odd but not too unpleasant—and stretched out beside him instead. John sat up and pulled his shirt off over his head, mopping the rest of Rodney's come off his chest and face with it before tossing it across the room.

"So," John frowned down at where his pants and underwear were bunched around his thighs, "on or off?" He looked over at Rodney, who shrugged as best he could while lying down and feeling like all of his bones had suddenly vanished.

"I don't have anywhere else to be," Rodney said, in what he desperately hoped was a casual tone.

John nodded. "Off," he said decisively, leaning forward to remove his boots. When he was finally naked, he laid back down on the bed, propping his head up on his fist and looking down at Rodney.

Rodney stared back up at him, feeling awkward and entirely unsure of what he should do, until finally John leaned down and kissed him gently, his free hand cupping Rodney's jaw, and really, it wasn't all that hard to kiss him back.

Actually, it was pretty damn easy.

* * *

**entelechy** _n._  
 **1.** In the philosophy of Aristotle, the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realized; actuality.  
 **2.** In some philosophical systems, a vital force that directs an organism toward self-fulfillment.


End file.
